


Through me you pass into the city of woe

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-18
Updated: 2006-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:02:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Demons lie. It's what they're good at.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through me you pass into the city of woe

"And on the fourth level," Sister Mary Catherine said, tapping her cane on the floor with every uneven step, "the prodigal and avaricious toil, heaving great weights to and fro, alongside those who have lived greedily and wastefully, misers and skinflints--"

"Sister?" A timid voice rose from the back of the room, a tiny hand rose above the sea of blue blazers and attentive faces.

Sister Mary Catherine stopped pacing and turned her piercing blue gazes on the rows of students. "Misers and skinflints," she said, louder, clearer, her voice echoing on the wood-paneled walls, "suffering the punishment of their voracious and selfish lives."

She blinked rapidly, tapped her cane on the floor, and began pacing again.

~

Fire and brimstone he expected. Black mud, rains of fire, burning wastelands, lakes of putrescence and rivers of blood. The wails of the damned, begging and pleading, screams of terror and pain, ceaseless and deafening. Nameless monsters, abominations and malformed nightmares, all of these he expected.

He didn't expect the silence.

And he didn't expect the whispers.

~

"The wrathful and the angry," Sister Mary Catherine said, her voice ringing like a choirmaster's, "are damned to the fifth level."

She stopped and rested one gnarled hand on the podium, scanning the room, her eyes resting on one child, then another, and another.

"Those who fight, those who are full of hatred and cruelty, they spend eternity tearing each other to pieces with their teeth."

Small noises of disgust and uneasy laughter rippled through the classroom. Sister Mary Catherine stepped away from the podium, whipping her hand back into the folds of her habit, and the student fell silent.

~

_Hello, John._

Low and sultry, smoke-rough and whiskey-soaked, a dozen anonymous women in a dozen anonymous bars, whispering over his skin -- _skin is gone, body is gone_ \-- like the softest nighttime breeze.

_Settling in okay?_

The breath of wind changed to a gentle touch, cool fingers caressing his scorched and stinging body. Strands of hair as smooth as silk brushed across his face, tickling his jaw and lips, dragging through the stubble on his chin.

_Please, make yourself at home._

Fingers traced along his arms and danced playfully across his chest. His body reacted -- _the body is gone, nothing left but ash_ \-- and he inhaled sharply. The acrid odor of sulfur mingled with long-forgotten scents: gentle lavender perfume, the prairie wind in summer, baby powder and baking bread and fresh-cut grass.

_You're going to be here a while._

The fingers hardened, flashed from warm to colder than ice in an instant, sharpened and curved over his chest, over his heart, nails like iron digging into the memory of his skin.

_We are so looking forward to your stay, John._

~

"You are wicked children."

Sister Mary Catherine narrowed her eyes and tapped her cane on the floor. The floor vibrated beneath each impact -- _rap rap rap_ \-- a tremble that ran under the desks and through the soles of their shoes.

"If your belief in God fails, as it will," Sister Mary Catherine said, "you will find yourself in a burning wasteland, surrounded by walls of iron and tombs of stone where the wicked lie. That is the sixth level."

~

The demon with the yellow eyes was a talkative son of a bitch.

"You taught them well," it said, a hint of amusement rippling behind the words. "Taught them to fight, taught them to make a stand, taught them to care for each other."

There was no light, no air, no ground beneath him, but he knew the demon was circling him, a hyena guarding a carcass.

"And they do care for each other. They do it very, very well," the demon said. It's laughter shuddered through him like convulsions and nausea, slicked with mockery and taunts. "Did you teach them that, as well? To seek comfort in the night, behind locked doors and beneath tangled sheets, moaning and whispering and begging -- such shocking things they say, those mouths you taught to be obedient, those beautiful bodies you turned into weapons, now wrapped in lust and need--"

He couldn't shout, couldn't speak, but he heard a strangled gasp that was likely his own, and the demon laughed again.

"Oh, don't be like that, John." The yellow eyes flashed brighter then faded, sinking into the darkness. "They are only doing what you taught them: family comes first."

~

"The limbs of gnarled trees bearing poisoned fruit," Sister Mary Catherine said, holding her cane high above her head like a stolen branch or splendid sword, "these are the suicides, and through their wretched wood flows a river of boiling blood."

The shadow of her cane was long and thin on the blackboard behind her, and as the children watched it grew, widened and split in three tines, growing like a tree.

"Tyrants and assassins, blasphemers and sodomites," Sister Mary Catherine said, "this is where they are damned."

She brought the cane down swiftly; it whistled through the stifling air of the classroom and slapped the podium with a loud _crack_. The shadow of twisted branches lingered on the blackboard for several moments, like sunspots burned into the children's eyes.

~

"Do you ever think about your life?" the demon asked, then it laughed, pleased with its own joke. "Of course you do. Hell is for memories, you know. All of the rest -- fire, blood, rot -- that's nothing more than interior decorating."

As though on cue, the space around him was filled with screams of agony and pleas of despair, choking black smoke and the smell of rotting flesh.

"Special effects, if you will," it went on thoughtfully. "The real torment -- why, we hardly have to do anything at all. You must think of them, here in the dark. The parents you left in their pathetic home, the soldiers you killed in the jungle, the stern nuns who rapped your knuckles -- what would they think of you now? Dear Sister Mary Catherine, such a good woman, she tried so hard to steer you into an innocent and blameless life. And what of the wife you couldn't save, the sons whose lives you've destroyed so deftly?"

Images flashed around him, a whirlwind of faces smeared against black, oily stone, bright colors and bits of sounds torn away before he could catch them.

"There are those down here who could learn a thing or two from you, John."

Mary laughing, a baby crying, gunpowder and warm blood, disappointed frowns, gleaming medals pinned to a dress uniform, a straw target with four arrows in the bull's-eye, a black car on an empty road that curves over the horizon, smooth and wide and quivering in the heat, endless.

"When you set out to ruin something, you certainly do it well."

~

"Hypocrites and seducers," Sister Mary Catherine said.

But before she could go on she gasped, choking and coughing, her hands flying up to her throat and her face going white. Small, strangled noises escaped and the children stared in shock as the inside of her mouth became shadowed with black, filled with writhing darkness, and tiny black spiders poured out, spilling over her papery skin and down the dark length of her habit. The children screamed and began to run from the room, scrambling over each other in their attempts to avoid the sea of spiders spreading over the floor.

A boy in the back of the room stood up, his timid hand raised high. "Wake up," he said, and more urgently, "Wake up, Johnny. It's only a dream. _Wake up._"

But nobody heard him.

~

"I know you think about them all the time." The demon chuckled, almost fondly, its eyes flashing like a cat's in the darkness. "After all, you don't have anything else to do."


End file.
